25 Umbrellas
by KARINRIN
Summary: Rin has always been independent. When her parents announce their house becoming a boarding house, she has never felt so cheated. Four new, strange tenets arrive, and she finds that she can relate to them in more than one way.RxL


_*cue magical glitter and sparkly music*_

_I...am not dead! :D Or, I don't think I am. Anyways, I thought I should either write Unforgotten or start something new. I don't know why, but this image _**http://i251(dot)photobucket(dot)com/albums/gg320/hananatsu/7889725(dot)jpg**_ really inspired me. Rin looks good with long hair, doesn't she? Anyways, this is a short intro/chapter one thingy and the next few chapters won't be split into four parts like this one. It's really more comfortable to read this after you paste in into Word. The wide dimensions of the screen makes it uncomfortable to read from on side to another xD. _

_I really wanted this fanfic to be serious, but them when I got to Meiko's part....I bombed. I couldn't do it. Meiko? Serious? Pshaw._

_But really, 255 characters was not enough space for me to write the summary for this fanfic. The summary sucks. Really. It does.  
_

_As usual, I don't own anything, except for the plotline. Fanmade vocaloids belong to their respective owners. Oh yeah. Camelia is OC. A not very important one.  
_

* * *

Chapter One | Rin

Lately, I've been thinking. About school, about my family, about friends, about love, but mostly about the future. I'm only fourteen, and I still should be depending on my parents a lot, but I really can't. So, I'm on my own.

High schools, colleges, and occupations—I have to figure those out all by myself. Not to mention this week's meals and bills.

Shaking off the snow from my boots, I'm not expecting anybody to be home. Before mulling over the electricity and utility bills, I go fix the thermostat so I don't freeze to death while doing so. After turning it up to at least seventy degrees, I unwrap my scarf from my neck and fling it onto the sofa, preparing to enter the kitchen.

But as I enter the kitchen, my heartbeat stops and my mouth parts slightly in surprise. But mostly it's my eyes; I swear they're as wide as golf balls when I see who's sitting at the kitchen table. The grocery bags in my hands drop to the cold, tile floor.

I don't even see my parents seated across the table. All I see is the stranger sitting in front of me, as if this was his own house and he owned it.

This. Is. A.

Home.

Invasion.

* * *

Chapter One . Two-Five | Luka

"Luka, isn't it about time you put away that silly canvas and talk?"

A shuffle from outside, and then nothing but the calm motion of a brush stroking across canvas.

"Aw, is that any way to treat your boyfriend?"

_Ex_-boyfriend.

"Come on, we haven't seen each other since Thanksgiving. Come out and give me a hug!"

Why would I hug someone I broke up with because of his terrible personality?

A silent swoosh of a curtain darkens the room, and I look up just in time for the lights to flicker on. After setting my brush back onto the easel, I wipe my hands on my apron, admiring and critiquing my own work.

"Thanks, Cam," I say, and smile at her. She beams a "No problem" and steps around to look at my painting. Camelia's fragmented Japanese is the first thing you notice about her, but underneath that she's an incredibly good artist. And I look up to her.

I nod and voice my opinions as she critiques and mentions several areas in my painting, but my attention is elsewhere. I watch the shadow from the window that the curtain can't block out; the silhouette is non-moving, but I know it's watching me all the same. Finally, Camelia notices my discomfort, and moves back.

"That boy again, huh?" She frowns at the window. "How many times as it been this week? I don't even remember a day at the shop without him anymore."

"He'll go away soon," I reply quickly. But Camelia doesn't look convinced. "It's because I just broke up with him; he'll go away as soon as he realizes that there's no chance of getting back together."

"And when did you break up with him?"

"End of November."

She raises an eyebrow. "It's the beginning of January, Luka."

"He's just persistent," I mumble distantly, and swallow the lump in my throat, as if that would make all of my worries go away.

"He damn is," she mumbles, and moves to the door, and immediately begins cursing in vulgar English to scare him away. It definitely surprises him, and I see the silhouette move, but not before it makes a motion with its hands.

"Call me".

* * *

Chapter One . Five | Meiko

The snow drifts onto my shoulders and melt as I step out of the taxi and enter my workplace. I nod to the security guard, as I do every day, and step into the elevator with about, let's say, _five hundred_ other employees. No, I'm kidding. But I felt like a sponge caught in a pile of rocks.

The ding of the elevator sounds as it reaches the fifth floor, where I work. Gripping my coffee tightly, I straighten my back and prepare to make my dignified entrance.

Right.

Just as I take one step out of the elevator, a laptop business bag slams into the back of my shin and my knees buckle. I grab onto somebody's shoulder, but not before the contents of my Starbucks coffee cup sloshes onto the front of my new, pearly white suit. I gasp as the searing hot liquid splashes onto the cloth and seeps onto my skin, dripping down my stomach.

"Le gasp," I mutter as I walk briskly (or try to) down the hall, dotting my shirt with a plethora of napkins and hoping the jacket in the little corner I call my office would hide it before today's "conference".

"Good morning," I say moodily as I sweep into the tiny space that held my work computer and files. Unlike the higher ups that had separate rooms for their offices, I shared a giant room with a multitude of other people. Only a small wall that was a few inches shorter than me while standing separated us.

"Good morning, Meiko-san," a tired voice emanates from the other side of the wall on my left. "Did you get the scripts done?"

I blink. Scripts?

"Uh, yeah…of course…" I curse as I bang cabinet doors open, searching for the manila envelope that held our client's newest novel. The sigh from the other side of the wall didn't come with any restraint.

Despite what you think, I work at a publishing company. And, I say "despite what you think" because I actually kind of like it. Nothing too flashy, or personal, or hard to do. All I have to do is search for mistakes in scripts for novels and thingy like that. Of course, I'm not the only one who does it, so my job is actually quite dispensable. But a job is a job, and heaven knows when I'll find another opening.

"Time for the conference," my neighbor says, knocking on the wall. I immediately set the envelope back onto my desk, and stand up, yawning. Anything to get me out of editing this boring novel about a cheap cliché romance would be good.

Another thing about me—I've been told that I have the attention span of a flea. And I've asked around about the attention of a flea; believe me, I don't think it's that big, because they told me that since a flea was so small its attention span would have to be smaller.

"Meiko!" I jump as I suddenly see a plump, red faced business man standing right in front of me, practically frothing at the mouth.

"A-ah, yes?" Judging by the acute redness of his neck, I'd say that he's already said my name about, oh, four or ten times.

He sucks in his breath and leans back, arms crossed. "I'm sorry to say this, but as I brought to everybody's attention earlier—" He glares at me, because obviously I hadn't been paying attention. "We're running low on funds for employee paychecks. Now, we can vote to each share this money and get a little bit less in each paycheck, or we can gamble and lay off the people—" He wiggles a plump envelope in his hand. "In this said envelope."

Murmurs among the crowd.

Narrowing my eyes, I look around at the people and their expression. To me, it seemed as if he had already decided that people were going to lose jobs today, and was just playing a game with it to make the loss seem more.

"Didn't think so!" he chimed, a feral grin on his face.

A few minutes later, I was back on the streets, snow drifting back onto my bright red coat. It seemed so odd, my bright red among a sea of depression. Oh well, I guess I didn't like my job that much anyways.

It happened again.

I was jobless.

As I checked my mail and sifted through the daily expected letters, I realized something, and whispered, "And soon to be homeless."

* * *

Chapter One . Seven-Five | Kaito

"Habanero pepper! Habanero pepper! Habanero pepper! Habanero pepper! Habanero pepper! Habanero pepper! Habanero pepper! Habanero pepper! Habanero pepper! Habanero pepper! Habanero pepper! Habanero pepper! Habanero pepper! Habanero pepper! Habanero pepper!"

I think. I'm going. To die.

Or at least commit suicide.

"AKAITO!" I roar, ripping the door to his room off its hinges and swinging it across the room.

"Looking good, brother," he smirks, and continues to tinker at some contraption at his desk.

"What the hell are you doing?" I dodge the metal scraps flung around the carpet and make my way to his desk. "You _do_ realize that we share this room, and you can't leave the room like this, right?"

"Well," he sighs breathily and dramatically. "There _used_ to be a door hiding it. I'd thought for sure that Taito would be the one to break the door this time, but I'd never thought it would be you, dear sweet brother."

"Smartass today, aren't you," I mumble, and begin moving downstairs to get the tools. As I pass by the living room, I see the usual scene of Akaiko and Seito watching television and MoKaito drinking his stupid caffeine, but I did a double take from the lack of yellow. "Where's Kikaito and Kikaiko?"

Akaiko makes a vague motion to her left arm, and I immediately understand. Prosthetic checkup. Kikaito and Kikaiko, the two blondes of the oversized family I'm a part of, were born with defunct body parts. At a young age, they had already begun using prosthetics so they could try to live normally.

As I try to screw the door back on (kind of unsuccessfully) I watch Akaito build his weird contraptions. I glance over the weird pepper machine he was making that finally stopped chanting "Habanero Pepper!" when I find something weird. Something very, very weird.

"Akaito," I begin slowly. "What the hell is that?"

"Hm?"

Silence ensued; we both turned to stare at the little metal contraption, when suddenly, it jumped in the air.

"Me is Kaito!"

I did a WTF double take and bit my knuckles to keep myself from screaming incredibly girlishly. I banged my elbow against the door as it lunged toward me, but Akaito only laughed. "That's Mekaito! I made him yesterday. Isn't he cute? He's going to clean the room after I'm done with Habanero Pepper."

I was going to open my mouth to tell Akaito to dissemble the little creep when the front door slammed, causing me to bite my knuckles again.

"Ah, Taito's home. And, I _know_ that whenever you bite your knuckles you're suppressing a girly scream. It's no use hiding it." He tinkers with his tools a bit more, and then adds, "There are new bandages in the bottom cabinet in the kitchen."

I grunt a response, and then stomp downstairs. I think I'd be hairless and bald by now from looking after my stupidly large family. Not only is it an abnormally large family, everybody in it (except for me) has no common sense or survival instinct at all. Like Taito for instance. I don't think he even allows his wounds to heal before getting some more. And to make it worse, everybody except for our parents, who travel the world giddily in love, live in this house. Well, except for Kamaito. He's in jail, for scaring the crap out of the girl who was visiting her grandparents next door. He appeared in the middle of the night outside and you know the rest.

Along with a flurry of blood and wounds, Taito brings the mail in with him. Frustrated and fed up, I flip through them, flinging the utility bills and useless junk crap to my left and the rest either over my head or across the room. I'm about to fling the last piece of junk, an advertisement, when my eyes recognize the words printed in big, bold text.

Yes, this might be exactly what I need.


End file.
